Mini Wind Turbines for Rooftops: ‘Up to 50% More Power’ and No Spinning Blades | Hacker News Reader

Mini Wind Turbines for Rooftops: ‘Up to 50% More Power’ and No Spinning Blades

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23 pointsfagnerbrack13 comments

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> their boxy turbines generate energy in 50% greater amounts then a solar panel

Huh? That's like saying "The wind is blowing 50% faster than the sun is shining"

It's a nonsense comparison from a company making what seems like questionable vaporware.

=== Edit : I couldn't resist one more.

> I like to think of this as kind of disruptive and complimentary to the solar business

Ah yes. Disruptive and complimentary.

Well, I find the use of “then” more obviously incorrect. But I’m not sure I agree that your comparison is right. It’s talking about energy generation, which is a common unit of measure and is dependent not just on how much energy is available from the wind and sun but also on the efficiency of converting it to usable electricity. Or am I missing something?

Assuming it’s not vaporware, which I agree is a stretch, I think another issue is not all roofs can accommodate these things. It looks built for flat roofs of significant size and probably strength. That said having wind and solar provides a joint probability distribution that reduces the amount of time you need battery storage - but not enough to do without.

You would need battery storage only if you have no grid connection.

No numbers?

The trick appears to be that it's some sort of aerofoil wind "concentrator" around a small turbine with its axis facing upwards.

They do have spinning blades (just not exposed) a hidden propeller, so I'm skeptical of the claim for no noise, but if true that would be great. Looks like a good innovation, especially for countries like the UK which get lots of wind but little sunshine.

Yes, if you go to their site there is a video of it working. Basically it makes a windcatcher drive a turbine inside the unit.

https://www.aerominetechnologies.com

If the lies start that early, you can usually just not read the rest and lose nothing.

Bad marketing does not correlate closely with bad engineering.

To steal a comment I saw on HN last week: Until there is a "Buy Now" button it's better to just assume it's vapourware :(

Also, all the meaningless comparisons are very distracting (up to more power than 10 times a solar panel of unknown size or less!)

These things get posted here from time to time. Most of the time they don't post numbers, or when they do the numbers don't make sense. Eevblog / Thunderf00t debunked so many if them.

When your only shtick is debunking, everything looks like a scam. But things often work better in some places than others. There is no reason to put them up in any but the places where they do.

(That is not to suggest most Musk ventures make sense anywhere.)

yeah but have they seen the latest 800w solar panels?

Back in the '80s, a design for a full-scale wind turbine was in, probably, Popular Mechanics. It looked like a nuke cooling tower with vertical slots, and ... vanes? arranged to generate a tornado vortex inside. At bottom center, a wind turbine caught air driven from below into the eye vacuum.

Apparently it was impractical just because it was very, very loud. I wonder if today it could be made practical with active noise cancellation, or clever modern fluid-dynamic treatment beyond '80s capability.

Even if not, it seems like there are places it would be tolerable. And maybe small ones would be useful, even as-is. It should anyway be easy enough to try out.

Much of the proposed value of the title gadget is in relying on existing roofing to concentrate wind where it is. That, and you can also put solar on the same roof, so get power from two uncorrelated sources. It's not prima facie silly, even though the marketing is tone-deaf. Good ideas often get bad marketing.

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